


The Depths Of Love

by profdanglais



Series: Secret Things [3]
Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Angst, Emma has to make some choices, F/M, Heartbreak, Post 3a, Secret Relationship, just a reminder to everyone that I don't like Neal, no-curse 3B, though I don't think he's treated unfairly here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-26
Updated: 2019-05-26
Packaged: 2020-03-19 19:26:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18976861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/profdanglais/pseuds/profdanglais
Summary: Pan is defeated, the Nevengers are settling into life in Storybrooke, and Emma has to make some choices.Please her parents and her son by reuniting with Neal, or follow her heart?(and what does her heart even want?)One huge heartbreak or a lifetime of small ones?(or no heartbreak at all-- but that choice takes courage)And what will she do when Killian decides he needs to protect his own heart?(Post 3A with no second curse.)





	The Depths Of Love

**Author's Note:**

> I've been very into the Secret Relationships trope lately, maybe eventually I'll write one I'm fully happy with. This one is angsty, emotional, and features Emma kinda-sorta dating Neal while sleeping with Killian. Fair warning. 
> 
> I've never used a beta before, but that was only because I was waiting for RecoveringTheSatellites (@thisonesatellite) to come into my life. Without her brilliant input and encouragement this fic would not have survived to see the light of day. She's the very best.

Dawn broke annoyingly early in Maine in the summertime, thought Emma irritably as a shaft of sunlight caught itself in the prism of the rippled glass set into the windows of the Captain’s quarters on the _Jolly Roger,_ and shone right into her eyes. It couldn’t be much past five a.m., which meant that she didn’t have to be at the station for another four hours and she wanted to spend at least three of those asleep.

Sleep had been in rather short supply the night before.

She couldn’t help sighing at the memory, or lacing her fingers through those of the man breathing softly at her back, curled around her with his hand splayed across her belly. His fingers locked with hers in a response both automatic and unconsciously possessive, as all his touches tended to be.

It was so very new, this thing between them. New and tentative and undefined, and still known only to them. Emma was aware that he was still waiting for her to run from it, still approached every opportunity to touch her as if it were the last. She could see it in the quickly-quenched flare of panic in his eyes every time she pulled herself from his embrace, could feel it in the way he held her just that little bit too tightly, kissed her a breath too deeply each time they said goodbye.

Goodbye from him meant farewell, his persistent hope hedged against the very real possibility that she would never return.      

Emma appreciated not being taken for granted but it made her heart hurt all the same, a tight, twisty, bittersweet ache in her chest that would be less painful if she didn’t know exactly how she could make it go away. For both of them.  

_(Try something new, darling. It’s called trust.)_

If only she could.    

 

The sun was streaming through the windows now with the full force of early-June brightness, and Emma was pretty sure Killian was awake. The way his fingers twitched as she pulled her hand from his, resisting the urge to hold tight to her, seemed to confirm it.

She turned in his arms and smiled. “It’s early,” she said.

 _We still have time,_ she meant.

 _I won’t go yet,_ she meant.

His answering grin rivalled the June sun itself, though clouds lingered as they always did behind his eyes. 

“Aye,” he teased. “I’m surprised to find you awake at this hour.”

“Sun’s in my eyes,” she murmured, burying her face in his shoulder.

“I could close the curtains—”

“No, don’t go.” She tightened her arms around his waist, slipped one of her legs between his, nuzzled his jaw. “Let’s just stay like this.”

She was sending mixed signals, she _knew_ she was, clinging to him with one hand while the other pushed him away. She knew it was unfair, cruel even, and she hated doing it but couldn’t make herself stop, couldn’t sort through the tangle of emotions in her heart or thoughts in her head enough to be straight with him. Or with herself. Or anyone.

“Of course, love,” he replied, and she heard the _my_ he didn’t say.

She fell asleep as he stroked her hair, his lips warm against her temple.

 

He kissed her at the foot of the ladder before she left, his fingers curling against the back of her head, holding her close for as long as he could. When he stepped back the look in his eyes threatened to break her. She wanted to break, wanted almost desperately to crack enough to let him in. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t risk her heart again.

“Goodbye, Emma,” he said.

 

Hours later when she went for lunch at Granny’s he was there, laughing with Ruby and Tink, the warm, rich sound and the stretch of the cords in his neck as he threw his head back making her gut clench and reminding her of just how possessive her own touches might be, if she let them. If she gave in to the urge to claim him, an urge that sat uncomfortably in her chest and grew stronger with each stolen night in his bed. She wanted to grab him, wrap herself around him, kiss him right there in public until there could be no doubt in anyone’s mind that he was hers.

But she couldn’t. Henry was waiting for her.

And Neal.

 

Neal, who now met her and Henry for lunch every Saturday, who had a standing invitation to her parents’ for Sunday dinner, whom her mother was clearly already mentally measuring for the wedding tux.

Neal, who had recently begun to drape his arm around her shoulders when they were together, casually at first then with increased resolve. Neal who kissed her now when they said goodbye, just a light kiss but decidedly on her lips, and growing longer and more insistent each week.

Henry pretended not to notice but the light of happiness on his face at the sight of his parents together stopped Emma from pulling away. She had to try, for Henry’s sake. Her son deserved a family.

 

She slid into the booth next to Henry and ignored the way Neal looked at her, the smug confidence in his eyes and in the twist of his mouth. He thought she was a sure thing, that his path back to her was clear, and she knew why.

_(“Swan, no, stop love. I can’t.” Killian held her back, away from him, even as his eyes devoured her._

_“Why? You don’t want me?” She let her own eyes caress the length of him, noting his laboured breathing and the heat in his gaze, his lips reddened by her kiss, the bulge in his trousers. He had never been subtle about his interest in her, either with his words or his body._

_“I want you more than I want to draw my next breath,” he growled. “As you well know. But I promised Baelfire—”_

_“Fuck_ ‘Baelfire,’ _” she spat on a surge of frustration. She didn’t want to think about Neal now, or about how_ she _had also promised, to try to make things work with him. She didn’t want to think at all._

_He choked out a laugh.“I’d rather not if it’s all the same to you.”_

_She hooked her fingers under the waistband of his pants, pulling him towards her. “Me neither. So let’s fuck each other instead.”_

_“Emma, I gave my word—”_

_“Hook, I don’t care about whatever macho dick-measuring idiocy you and Neal have going on, neither of you gets to decide what I do with myself or my life.” She stepped closer still until her breasts brushed against his open shirt, her fingertips coming to rest on his chest, tracing gentle patterns through the hair. He held his smirk but also his breath, and she pressed her advantage. “Only I decide that, and I have decided that I want you to fuck me. Hard. And now.”_

_His hand was warm and rough as it slipped beneath her sweater, sending sparks dancing along her skin, ripples of lust that began in her belly and went clear to the tips of her toes._

_“Well, when you put it like that darling how can I refuse?”)_

She ignored Neal’s face across the table and Killian’s laugh from across the room and the sympathetic if slightly accusatory glances Tink was shooting her and concentrated on her lunch and Henry’s eager delight at having both his parents with him. She smiled as her son chattered brightly about the books he was reading and his friends at school and when Tink and Killian left the diner together she was barely even tempted to turn and watch them go.

She _wasn’t_

 

_(“I could never refuse you anything,” he’d whispered into her hair, after, when he thought she was asleep. And when she snuck away in the grey dawn light he had pretended he was.)_

 

(Tink knew about them, about her and Killian.  She was the only one who knew, having caught Emma in a moment of drunken weakness a month or so ago at the Rabbit Hole. Emma had told Tink everything, _everything,_ from her lonely childhood to Neal’s betrayal to her complicated and confusing feelings for Killian. How their one-time thing had become many times until simple lust had blossomed into something terrifyingly _more_ , spiralling faster than she could have imagined until she was dangerously close to needing him. How she was pretty sure he already needed her.

 _He does,_ said Tink’s eyes, though her mouth was silent. _Please don’t break his heart._

She didn’t know what brought it on, this avalanche of confessions; perhaps it was because Tink didn’t know her, or because she did know Neal, from _before,_ or because Killian trusted her.

She suspected Killian had also confided in Tink and wished like hell she knew what he’d said, but she never dared ask and Tink never told. The fairy could keep a secret.

“So if Bae left you in jail when you were pregnant, why are you giving him another chance?” Tink had asked, and Emma wished she had an answer.

“It’s for Henry.” That sounded unconvincing, even to her own ears. “And my parents… well, they kinda seem to expect it.”

Tink nodded. “He was your first love. I get it. But even so I’m surprised they’d _still_ want you to get back with him, knowing what he did to you.”

Emma made an indistinct sound and took another drink. Tink’s eyes grew wide.

“They don’t know.”

“Nope.”  

“You’ve got to tell them, Emma! Or they’re just going to keep pressuring you. Tell them now, before they, I don’t know, name their new baby after him or something.”

Emma shuddered at that prospect. “They wouldn’t,” she said.

_Would they?_

“I don’t know,” said Tink. “Mary Margaret really likes him. And she’s not that fond of Hook.”

Emma knew precisely her mother’s opinion of Hook, and of Neal, but she proceeded to drown it, along with the lingering uneasiness in her gut at having confided so freely in a virtual stranger, in enough bourbon to wash away the state of Kentucky itself before stumbling off to the _Jolly Roger_ and crawling into bed with its owner, sinking deep into the warmth of his embrace, calling him _Killian_ for the first time in a slurred voice muffled against his skin.

Killian, who hadn’t had sex with her that night despite her best efforts and his painful-looking erection, who had instead made her drink a glass of water before cuddling her close and soothing her to sleep. Killian, who cooked her bacon the next morning on the new camp stove in his galley kitchen and who was just completely unable to hide the happiness in his eyes as he’d kissed her goodbye.

He was happy simply to hold her while she slept, she thought, helpless and incredulous at that revelation. Happy she’d come to him, and stayed the night.

He was happy just to be with her.

Her chest tightened just thinking about it and her skin itched and her breath hitched and it was just _too much_. Too much emotion, too much pressure.

She’d avoided him for a week after that night, staying away from Granny’s, dodging into alleys and ducking behind cars when she saw him on the street until the longing grew too great and she found herself back at his ship. She’d marched right in, not drunk this time but determined, determined to give him _something_ because she lo— she cared about him too and she couldn’t tell him so, not with words. She’d told him with her body instead, long into the night, and though his eyes were sad and a bit angry, he had taken everything she’d offered and given even more, making her come over and again until she was boneless and quivering.

“Gods, woman, how you wreck me,” she swore she heard him whisper, as she drifted off.

The next morning the sadness was still in his eyes and there it had remained, though she kept coming back, kept spending the night, whenever she could.

It wasn’t enough. She knew it wasn’t.  

He was waiting for her to break his heart. She knew he thought it was only a matter of time. And she knew that he might be right.)

 

She had Henry to herself that evening and they watched a movie and ate popcorn with Milk Duds melted in it and Emma was happy, calm and peaceful until Henry went to bed and the restlessness kicked in. She didn’t want to watch anything or listen to anything or read anything or take a bath, and when she went to bed she lay awake unable to stop thinking about how much she missed Killian’s warmth surrounding her, his even breathing at her back and his possessive hand on her belly or her hip or her breast.

How was it even possible that she’d reached a point where she couldn’t sleep without him?

The tightness in her chest increased.

 

She stayed away for three days and when she returned to the _Jolly Roger_ she found him preparing for a voyage. Her heart stopped, then thundered. Her hands shook.

“What are you doing?” she demanded, more harshly than she’d intended.

“I’m going—”

“ _Going!?_ ”  

“—up the coast to another town,” he finished, looking at her oddly. “The Queen wishes me to collect some supplies.”

“Huh. Okay.” _Breathe, Emma. He’s coming back._

“Aye.” Silence stretched between them as he continued his preparations and she watched him, that anxious tension squeezing her chest.

He tied one final knot, his hook flashing in the sunlight, then turned to her with another odd expression his face, this one hesitant and yearning. “I’m afraid I need to be off within the hour while winds and tides are favourable,” he said. “But you… perhaps, if you wished… you could come with me?”  

Oh, she wanted to. So much. “I can’t. Henry…”

“Aye of course.” He paused, examining the tip of his hook. “Although the lad does have two other parents, three if you count Robin, and his grandparents. He’d be well looked after.”

He would be. He’d be fine. David could handle the sheriffing. There was no reason she couldn’t go off with Killian, spend days alone with him, and nights…

She pushed those thoughts away, and shook her head. “I can’t.”

He sighed and nodded, as though he’d expected no other answer. “Of course, love.”

She loitered at the ship’s railing, waiting for him to approach, to kiss her goodbye. He remained where he was, standing awkwardly, scratching behind his ear.

“I guess I’ll see you when I get back then, Swan.”

Her chest was full-on aching now, tears burning behind her eyes. “How long…”

He shrugged. “A week, perhaps two. I might take the opportunity to do some exploring of this land.” He offered her a tentative smile, and she _hated_ that it was tentative. “Last chance to come along,” he said.

 _Yes._ “I wish I could, I just—”

He waved his hand, the brief hope in his eyes fading to resignation edged with bitterness. “No need to explain. Goodbye, then Swan.”

“Bye.”

_Farewell._

 

A week, he’d said. Perhaps two.

He was gone for three.

“There was a storm up the coast,” said Regina absently when Emma as subtly as she could dropped it into their weekly meeting that she hadn’t seen Hook for a while. “He had to take shelter in an inlet and wait it out.”

“How do you know?” _How do you know he’s all right? How do you know he’ll be back?_

_Please let him come back._

“I gave him a radio transmitter before he left, he’s been checking in regularly.” Regina looked up, sharp speculation in her eyes. “Why the sudden interest in the pirate, Miss Swan?”

“No reason,” said Emma hurriedly and fled Regina’s office.

 

As the days dragged by she found herself more and more often at the docks, her pretexts for being there growing increasingly threadbare, scanning the horizon for the masts of his ship.

Her father noticed her distraction but she brushed off his concern, and snarled at him when he pressed her.

Neal didn’t notice.

 

And then one morning Emma was out for a run when the masts of the _Jolly Roger_ appeared over the horizon. Her heart stumbled then raced and she had to stop and take several deep breaths to calm it.

 _He’s back,_ was all she could think. _He came back._

_He’ll always come back._

She took extra time with her hair that morning and put on a pretty blouse she’d bought while he was away, then fidgeted at the station for an hour until she felt that she could venture to the docks without appearing too eager.

She found him unloading crates from his ship onto a flatbed truck, managing the task deftly with his hook as his muscles rippled under the long-sleeved t-shirt he wore.

When did he start wearing t-shirts?

“You look different,” she blurted when he finally noticed she was there.

“Aye,” he flushed slightly and scratched behind his ear. “The Queen hinted rather strongly that if I were going to be making regular trips outside of Storybrooke it might be best if I dressed in clothing more acceptable to this realm.”

“And are you? Going to be making regular trips, I mean?”

“I might. It would be an occupation.”

“And you… managed to find some clothes, on your own?”

“I have travelled to many realms in my time, Swan, I am more than capable of adapting to new cultures.”

“Of course.” She fell silent as she watched him finish unloading, unsure of what to say. Once the last crate was on the truck he turned to look at her.

“I missed you when I was gone,” he said. “And I’ve had a lot of time to think over these past few weeks.” He looked nervous, and not in the sweet, ear-scratching way he had but like he was about to do something he knew would not bring happy consequences. “I thought a lot about you and about— well, us, and I— I don’t think I can do this anymore.”

“What?” His words rang in her ears and squeezed her heart and she felt faint. _He promised…_

He reached for her before catching himself, pulling back, clenching his fist. His face was earnest, entreating. “I need you to understand that this is not a rejection,” he pleaded. “You know how I feel about you and that will never change. But I can’t—” He broke off, swallowing hard, and looked away before continuing, his voice hoarse. “I can’t keep sleeping with you in secret like this, having you so close each night you feel like a part of me only to watch you walk away once daylight comes, back to Baelfire and to your parents who will never see me as worthy of you. I will always be here, love, for whatever you need, anything you ask of me. Anything except that.”

“Why?” she whispered

“I simply can’t bear it any longer,” he said with a bright smile that didn’t even attempt to reach his eyes. “I’m sorry, Swan. I just can’t.”

Emma could swear she was breaking, cracks spreading across her skin until the touch of a feather could shatter her. “So you don’t want to see me anymore?”

“ _Of course_ I do,” he said, and his eyes begged for understanding. “I’ll see you in town and if you ever need my ship or my assistance, I shall always offer them, gladly.”

 _That’s not enough._ “Killian...”  

“ _Please,_ Emma—” He swallowed again and ran his hand over his face, pressed his fingers against his eyes, and when he continued he couldn’t even summon his false smile. “Please, if you care for me at all, just— don’t come to me again,” he said, not meeting her gaze. “We both know I wouldn’t be able to refuse.”

 

Emma had no idea how but she managed to stumble back to her bug and once inside she drove, blindly, with no destination in mind, until she found herself idling at the town line.

Leaving Storybrooke.

 _I could just go,_ she thought. Just drive away. Away from her family and Neal and Killian and all these messy emotions she was no good at feeling. She could move to a city, New York maybe, where she could be solitary and anonymous and her life would be simple. Where there would be no pressure and no danger and no... love.

It would hurt, for a while. She would miss them. But staying would mean seeing _him_ , all the time, and each time thinking of what could have been, _should_ have been, if she’d only been able to trust.

What was worse, one huge heartbreak or a lifetime of small ones?

 

She didn’t leave, of course, she couldn’t, not for good anyway. No matter what mess she made of her own life there was still Henry, who may have more parents than most kids but still needed her.

 

So she pulled herself together and walled up her heart and when the numbness came she let it settle into her bones. She got up every morning and went about her day, then she went about the next one and then the next, and if she felt tears creeping into her eyes at odd, unguarded moments or noticed the dark smudges beneath them from restless nights in a twin bed that was somehow too big and too empty and too cold, she ignored it all.

She was fine.

She smiled when her parents invited Neal for dinner, smiled at Neal when he arrived, and when he suggested they have dinner the next night, just the two of them, she agreed. It was fine. She was fine.

_Henry deserves his family._

 

They went to Granny’s.

“There’s not much choice in this town,” said Neal, not that apologetically.

“It’s fine.” _It’s all fine_.

“You sure? We’ll be here again tomorrow with Henry—”

“I said it’s fine!” She snapped before she could stop herself, then took a calming breath. “I have lunch here every day, I don’t mind dinner too. It’s fine. Let’s just eat.”

“Okay.”

They sat in silence, staring at the menus they knew practically by heart.

“So how was work?”

“Fine.”

Neal tried again. “Town’s pretty quiet now.”

“Yeah.” That wasn’t fair, she had to try too. “Let’s hope it stays that way.”

“Yeah.”

Silence again.

Ruby came to take their orders with a bright smile that dimmed as she approached.

“Weird energy here,” she muttered to Emma.

“It’s been a long day.”

“Lasagna for me,” said Neal, who hadn’t heard them. “Grilled cheese for you, Ems?”

She had been planning to have exactly that but his smug tone irked her. “No, actually, I’ll have the chicken strips.”

“Whoa, trying something new, that’s not like you.”

_(…it’s called trust…)_

“Maybe you just don’t know me as well as you think.”

 

The door opened with a jingle of the bell and Killian entered, dressed in dark jeans and a short leather jacket and another of his new shirts, this one grey with open buttons at the neck. Her stonewalled heart lurched free of its confines and began to pound, so hard she felt dizzy, all the blood rushing to her head sweeping away the carefully curated numbness dulling her emotions. He was with Tink and Robin and Will, and he didn’t notice her at first. When he did he froze, taking in the sight of her sitting there in the booth with Neal, his face the picture of heartbreak. Then he nodded, forced a small smile, and turned away.

“Hey, look at that,” chuckled Neal. “Hook in jeans. Who’d a thunk it?”

“Yeah.” Emma could barely speak past the constriction in her throat. She was fine, she’d said, fine _fine_ it’s all fine, but no. She was not fine, _so_ not fine, and she knew she couldn’t sit there and pretend to be, couldn’t calmly eat her dinner across the table from Neal while Killian was on the other side of the room feeling things that could make his face look like that. If she could only go to him later as she had so many times before, not even for sex but just to comfort him, make him smile... but no, she couldn’t see him that night or any other.

She could never touch him again.

The room began to close in around her, shrinking, pressing down until her heartbeat was pounding in her head and she couldn’t breathe and all she could think of was escape. She scrambled out of the booth. “I— I’m not feeling great,” she said, not looking at Neal. “I think I should go.”

“What? But our food’ll be here soon—”

“You eat it. Or take it to go. I can’t— I’ve got to get out of here. I’m sorry.”

She fled the diner, focused only holding down her panic long enough to get away. She didn’t look at anyone, and _definitely_ not at Killian, missing the way he jumped to his feet the moment she did, how he moved to follow her before Tink put a hand on his arm and gently shook her head, the distress in his eyes as he watched her go.

The slump of his shoulders as he sat down again and took out his flask.

 

Neal found her with both hands braced against the hood of the bug, eyes screwed shut and breathing deeply.

“Hey, you okay?”

“I’m fine.” _Haha, liar._  

“I’ve got your food.” He held out a paper bag.

“Uh, thanks. Not really hungry.”

“So take it for later.”

She took the bag and he sat on the hood, and silence fell again.

Neal reached into the bag and grabbed a handful of fries, blithely munching them as Emma watched. “So I was thinking,” he said. “That maybe we should make this official.”

“What?”

He grinned indulgently, like she was a child. “You and me, Ems. Us. Back together, for real. Official.”

“Oh.”

Of course, this was what it had all been leading to. Them hanging out with Henry, the casual dinners with her parents. His arm around her shoulders, the goodbye kisses. When she didn’t say more Neal leaned forward and pressed his mouth to hers, lips slightly parted. A real kiss, not a goodbye peck, but one that meant business and demanded a response and she _couldn’t_.  

She pulled back, resisting the urge to wipe her mouth.

Neal scowled. “What’s wrong?”

_This. Everything. Everything’s wrong because I’m not—_

“I’m with Killian,” she blurted, and the world righted itself. The knot in her chest unwound and she relaxed for the first time in weeks.

 _I’m with Killian._  

“What?”

“Hook. Killian. And me. We’re— I mean, we were— well, I don’t know what we were or are exactly but we’re together.” She didn’t even blush at the lie, because she would _make_ it true.

Neal’s face had gone dark with anger. “You’d better be fucking kidding me.”

“I’m not.”

“What the _fuck_ Emma? How long has this been going on? And behind my back—”

“It’s not behind your back because we’re not together, Neal!”

“We’re as good as together! We’ve been dating for months! It’s what your parents want, and Henry—”

Guilt stabbed at her but she held firm. A lifetime of small heartbreaks would break them all. “I’m sorry they’ll be disappointed, but in the long run this is for the best. I don’t want to be with you. I can’t.”

“Because of _Hook,_ ” he spat.

“Not entirely—”

“That _fucking_ bastard, after he promised to— You know he just wants to fuck you, right? He doesn’t actually care about you. He doesn’t care about anyone.”

Emma thought of Killian’s eyes, the depth of the raw emotion in them, the sadness bordering on despair when he’d asked her to stay away. How could anyone think he was heartless? His problem was he cared _too much_. “He’s fucked me already,” she said harshly, hoping to shock him. “Many times, in fact, and he still wants me.” _Please God, let that be true._

Neal blanched then turned red with fury. “I can’t believe you’d let him touch you. Do you know what that _makes_ you? Do you know how many women he’s— Emma, he stole my mother!”

“You can’t steal people—”

“He _ruined_ my _life!_ ”

“Look I’m not going to argue with you about something that happened two hundred years before I was even born! All I know is that he— _loves me_ —cares about me and I care about him and I’m going to see where this thing between us goes.”

“It’s already gone _way_ farther than it should—”

“That’s none of your business,” she snapped. “We can still co-parent Henry along with Regina, but that’s it. What I do with my time and who I spend it with, who I _fuck,_ that’s not your concern and frankly it hasn’t been for the past eleven years.”

Neal was fuming, eyes narrowed to angry slits and nostrils flaring. His anger had scared her, once, but no longer.

She drew a deep breath. “And also,” she continued, “I’m going to tell my parents how things ended with us. How you left me in jail.”

“Oh, _come_ on! You know I had no choice—”

“I know you say you didn’t. But I also know that— _Killian would never have left me_ —it seriously messed me up, what you did, messed me up in ways I’m still not over. And I think my parents need to know about that.”

His face twisted into an ugly sneer. “It’s gonna take a lot more than some teenage bad judgement to make me look worse than a pirate.”

“ _I_ was a teenager, Neal. _You_ weren’t. And it’s not about making you look bad or anyone else look good, it’s about telling the truth.”

“The truth about me, but not about _him?_ ”

“Everyone knows the truth about him. He’s never made a secret of what he’s done or who he is. And he’s trying to be better. Why are you so afraid of people finding out what you did if you really had no choice?”

“You don’t understand.”

“I think I do.” She gave him a probing look. “Why do you want to get back with me?”

“What are you talking about—”

“It’s not because you love me, you were in love with Tamara five seconds ago.”

“Of course I love you—”

“Why?” she challenged.

“Huh?”

“Why do you love me? What _specifically_ about me do you love?”

“Well, I— I mean, you— you’re— you’re Henry’s mother—”

Emma’s mouth twisted. “And what if I weren’t? What if Henry didn’t exist, would you still want me? I’m not that sweet teenager who hung on your every word anymore, I’ve learned to take care of myself. I don’t need you.”

“But I suppose you need Hook?”

“No, I can live without him. I just don’t want to.”

 

She told her parents. About Neal and stealing the bug and their petty crime spree, the motel rooms and the watches and Tallahassee and jail and Henry. The swan keychain she still wore around her neck. How she _had_ loved him and still did, in a way, but could never trust him again, not with her heart.

Mary Margaret cried and tried to apologise and David’s jaw was so tense she feared he’d break a tooth. They hugged her and she let them, actually leaned into it, and when David cupped the back of her head she may have lost a tear or two herself. And when the tears had dried and Mary Margaret went to make hot chocolate Emma took a deep breath.

“Wait,” she said. “There’s something else I have to tell you. About Killian.”

“Who?”

“Hook.”

 

The next day Emma was emotionally exhausted but lighter than she’d been in years, free from the weight of bitter resentment she’d carried far too long. Free, and ready to try something new.

Her heart thundered as her feet carried her to the docks and onto his ship and down to his cabin. The door was open and she could see him sitting at his desk, flask in hand, a book open in front of him though she could tell he wasn’t reading it.

“Killian,” she said softly.

He looked up, joy flashing briefly across his face, chased by misery. He drank deeply from his flask. “What do you want, Swan?” he asked harshly.

“To see you.”

He closed his eyes, jaw clenched. “I asked you not to do this—”

“I ended things with Neal last night. Told him we could raise Henry together but that’s all. I told him I was with you.”

“You did?” His eyes were open now but wary.

“Yeah. And I told my parents about you. Us.”

Surprise joined wariness, followed by alarm. “Really?”

“Well, not _everything._ ”

“Thank the gods for that. It might be too much for poor old Dave.” His lips twitched in what was almost a smile.

So did hers. 

“Yeah. So, anyway, I came to tell you that I’m ready for everyone to know. I’ll take out a billboard on Main Street if you want, and also I’m here to ask you out.”

“Out?”

“On a date.”

“A date?”

“Yeah. That’s what it’s called when two people, you know, have dinner together, or a movie, or like, I don’t know—”

“Courting.”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“You wish to court me?” The wariness was still in his eyes but there was hope too and Emma’s heart was hurting again but in a good way this time.

She shrugged. “I don’t really know what that means. Let’s just start with dinner, okay? Maybe tomorrow?”

“All right.” He nodded, and the faint curl of his lips deepened into a genuine smile. “But you must allow me to plan the evening.”

She was smiling too, foolish and happy. “Since when does Captain Hook know anything about courting?”

“I’ll have you know that once, _very_ long ago, I was a proper and upright naval lieutenant who knew all the rules of etiquette. It’s best to know the rules if you want to break them.”

“And are you planning to break some rules with me?” Was she _flirting?_

He shot her a look that weakened her knees. “You’ll just have to come back tomorrow to find out.”

 

_“Only in the agony of parting do we look into the depths of love.”  
_

_\--George Eliot_


End file.
